


the poison you put through my lips (is the war paint i wear on my heart)

by Mistropolis



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You, 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs
Genre: (it's true. believe m, (well. it is a crossover w/ a vidgame), Alternate Universe - TWEWY Fusion, Angst and Drama, Developing Friendships, Don’t copy to another site, Multi, Temporary Amnesia, Temporary Character Death, Video Game Mechanics, as befitting all twewy ventures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-06-03 21:36:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19472674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistropolis/pseuds/Mistropolis
Summary: Underground Yokohama - a place where lost souls gather to unearth their new chances at life. A place where all shall be judged fairly on their determination to revive anew.A peculiar tale is about to unfold as a child with moonlight for pelt and fear for claws enters - the land of cutthroat battles shall drown in phoenix down.





	1. Day 1 - Cross your heart and live to die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (switches light on and off rapidly) welcome! to! another! of! my bad ideas! if you are completely new to what i write and are curious abt the weird-ass au ideas i got on the daily just look up Unbridled and unanchored hearts and u will have a better idea of what to expect in this fic. (save for the fact that this one actually has a set chapter limit. Somehow)
> 
> content warnings for:
> 
>   * vague ptsd flashbacks/vague descriptions of abuse (nothing explicit yet but. u all know what goes on in atsushi's backstory)
>   * feelings of unreality (as per the course for all twewy au protags. u'd know why by the end)
>   * attempt(tm) at self-sacrifice (idk if that's something i need to warn for but i'm putting here just in case) 
>   * fantastical violence (nothing serious actually goes on beyond the stabby stabby courtesy of kyouka and the usual fighting stuff atsushi's tiger does but again, i'm putting it here just in case)
> 


Like every story that was ever uttered in the world, it all began in darkness.

Darkness, the kind that not only envelopes everything in your senses but also into every forgotten nook and cranny inlaid in your heart. A darkness that is so absolute that you can choke on it.

Then, the bright glint of moonlight through the paint glass windows. It was a full moon tonight, you observe, the faint inside your head still wandering freely around your eyes. 

“Surely, you know what you must do at this point.”

What do you know? You stared back up at the filtered moonlight in hopes of guidance. The moonlight speaks of nothing, perhaps because it cannot, perhaps because the moonlight does not deign to offer anything to you.

“Leave this place. There is nothing for you to return to other than hell.”

Return to? Hell? None of those words makes sense.

You reached out a hand to touch your forehead. It’s burning like wildfire in the middle of autumn, something like a heat haze ping-ponging between the crevices of your head. 

You’ve made out that all four of your limbs are heavy as lead, hence why they are all stuck to the ground by cruel gravity. You tried to raise your hands, but that action alone takes such herculean efforts that even when you have achieved so you have become too exhausted to remember why you were doing that.

Nevertheless, you crawled.

And crawled.

And crawled.

The moonlight told you to be grateful that you are still alive. That you still have something to look forward to. You couldn’t help but disbelieve everything being said, being conveyed to you. You were not—

—falling—

—were you?—

… 

… 

… 

🎕

Atsushi wakes up to the torrents of white noise one can only hear on a busy street. 

First, he pushes himself off the rocky ground and takes a peek out of his messy bangs the sight of his surrounding. He is somewhere in the middle of a shopping district, full of shops and boutiques bustling with so many people that he couldn’t even locate their facial features individually. One person passes and Atsushi forgets about what they look like immediately.

“What is… Excuse me?” Atsushi stands back up on shaky legs, and his arms stay tucked by his side in the fear that any different motion would trigger unwanted consequences. He does reach out a hand, to try to get any pedestrian’s attention, however. “Um, can anyone here help me a little bit…”

Every forgettable face ignores him. Atsushi turns to scrounge around his pockets instead, hoping in his heart that a wallet with money or something else equally valuable will appear. People continue to speed past him, breezes and strong galls alike crashing against him as he searches the recess of his pockets.

His left hand comes back out of his trouser pocket empty, and just as Atsushi intends to retract his right hand with equal disappointment, it closes in something circular in the middle of his palm.

Atsushi pulls it out. It is an onyx black badge, the surface made out of soft fabric rather than the commonly used plastic, with a skull imprinted across its right side.

“What is this… ?” Atsushi pushes the badge to his eyes, but nothing about this badge aside from the skull design seems to stand out much. “Is it something I have to take care of or… ?”

No one out of the crowd seems to spare even one moment to talk to Atsushi. Atsushi swallows this universally acknowledged fact and presses the badge tight to him, careful to—

A blue haze pulses through Atsushi’s entire torso. Atsushi instinctively closes his eyes, fearful of any chemical that might be poured towards him—

(—chemicals? That might be poured towards him?

What sort of thought process is this?)

He strains to open his eyes again. If no one on this street will pay attention to him, perhaps what he has feared would not happen. 

He gazes out to his surrounding again—

—and an ocean of blue grasps him by the throat.

Atsushi turns around to survey the changes in his vision and senses. Rather than a normal street view as he has just woken up, his surrounding is now dipped into a hue of lapis blue, with the people around him turning into cyan silhouettes. Atsushi turns his attention back to the badge, but the badge sells no answer away.

“Am I going crazy?” Atsushi asks himself with a tight clutch on his collar. He didn’t feel any headache or any other significant body pain. Is he hallucinating? Is he—

“I swear to god, Yokohama is the most boring town we’ve gone to in Japan just yet.”

Atsushi startles, swinging his head painfully quick to the speaker. Despite the abnormal colouration, Atsushi could make out that the man is of European descent, with broader shoulders and sunglasses and other whatnot tourist gear. 

But what is so strange isn’t even on how Atsushi has just perceived him visually.

What is strange is that those words weren’t _spoken_.

Just as those apparent-thoughts pop up to Atsushi, the man was saying something else, raving about the seafood you can find in Yokohama rather than offering any crude critique as he has just done. The contrast is too sharp to ignore; does that mean Atsushi just heard the man’s thoughts?

A giggle escapes his lips. He must have been so starved of food that he imagines himself capable of hearing other people’s thoughts. Atsushi decides that he will find more of the inherent humour of this scenario when he finally gets himself some food.

Just for good measure, though, Atsushi releases his tight grip on the badge and feels a new sense of relief floods over him as the blue recedes and those inner thought-like whispers quiet. He finds a sewage manhole immediately and throws the badge in. The sound of it clanking down its descent brings Atsushi’s heart back down from the fear high. 

Atsushi turns left, away from the main street and towards a shopping arcade up ahead. The delicious scent of freshly-baked bread wafts from the bakery up ahead. Atsushi turns an expectant step towards it, only to remember neither of his trouser pockets contains any money.

“What the… Do I have to starve to death here somehow?” Atsushi surveys the silhouette ghosts around him again, and one tiny illicit thought is dragged up from the recesses of his mind.

“No, I can’t just rob anyone. Even if I’m this hungry, I…” Atsushi watches more people pass around him, and the image of the European tourist from just now pops up in his mind again. That man seems so rich, surely he won’t—

Atsushi punches himself on the left cheek.

“What the hell is wrong with you! You are wasting away space and air here and you even want to waste away other people’s money now?” His monologue cascades out of his head accordingly, drenching his already-weakened gut in guilt. “There’s no telling… Maybe you can…”

Atsushi leans himself next to a light pole and closes his eyes to the cerulean crowd. No matter what he does now, he’s in a deadlock; should he steal and feed himself, he will live with the guilt of using thievery to allow his meagre, unguaranteed survival; should he not steal and remain innocent, his body will surely give out and he will die. Such a dilemma, occurring right under the unforgiving Yokohama summer heat just as well. 

A crow’s call. Atsushi turns right towards the mailbox next to the lamppost, and a crow is staring at him, beady black eyes exhibiting some form of emotions Atsushi isn’t equipped to decipher. Before his mind could settle on any decision however, the crow flies right up to his face and drops something.

Forcing down another yelp, Atsushi opens his eyes to the item dropped into his hands. A flip-phone.

He turns it on, and the screen boots up to a message notification.

… Should he read it? How will he even know if the message is addressed to him? Maybe this is just a phone somebody on the street lost?

Another notification sound, yet when Atsushi turns to look at the screen there is already a message in full view, without him having touched the message pop-up.

_Reapers’ Game Day 1 Mission Objective:_

_Reach the Yokohama Marine Tower. Time limit: 24 hours_

Is this some sort of practical joke? First the strange vision, then the strange feeling of reading someone’s thoughts, and now this message Atsushi isn’t even sure if he is the intended recipient. Everything that has happened to him so far after the blackout only gets more ridiculous—

—the blackout. Atsushi’s mind returns to the subject he might or might not have unconsciously avoided up until now, but now that his train of thought has obediently stalled itself there his thoughts return there. At the nadir. 

There is that tiny freak-out about the very concept of “chemicals”, and some slight memories about… moonlight? Nothing that could comprise of a coherent narrative about his lost memories. Nothing that quite makes any sense at all. 

Atsushi looks towards the crowd again, searching for any potentially helpful or familiar faces, and none pop up to him at all. Perhaps he has been cursed to be all alone here? 

And now… without any strength left in his body, he will most probably die of unnatural causes on this street sooner or later.

A searing pain slashes across his left palm.

This time Atsushi does not hold in his scream, gripping at his palm and nearly driving his head against a wall in the blinding pain. He opens his eyes and looks into his left palm, expecting the sight of a bloodied wound.

Instead, he is greeted with the sight of a red timer, counting down threateningly from 59:01.

And on top of it, a smaller, red-framed number 23.

🎕

“This week we have to cull down more than thirty Players again, huh?”

“That’s right. Complain all you want, Nakahara-san. Such is the way of life for being a Harrier Reaper.”

Chuuya smashes his wine bottle against the table and jumps up onto it. “Hey now, Hirotsu old man, I never said I’m going to complain or anything. I know what I’m doing when I agreed to be a Harrier Reaper. All I’m saying is that this damn Composer honestly has some—”

“Please now, there will be no need for any argument between us or extending one with the Composer.”

Into the bar walks in two other Reapers, one wearing an extravagant hairpin and one wearing her plain blond hair into a bun. The former nods a greeting towards Hirotsu and takes a seat next to him, while the latter takes a seat edging a little further away from the group.

“Higuchi, there’s no need to be shy. None of us here mind talking our hearts out with each other.” Kouyou pats on the spot next to her. “And if any Reaper here is bothering you, just let me know.”

“Wah, I didn’t think Kouyou ane-san is that eager to extend a protective hand over other newbie Reapers. This almost makes me jealous.”

Kouyou chuckles lightly. “I suppose this can make you jealous if you still mind all that has happened with Da—”

Chuuya shoots up from the table and stomps towards the exit. “Ah! I just remember that the game is starting in several hours! Better go prepare! Bye for now!” 

As the door slams shut, Higuchi turns towards Kouyou nervously. “Did, did I do something I shouldn’t… ?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just mentioned someone he hates.” Kouyou pours another cup of _sake_ , a brilliant smile across her pale cheeks. “So, now, where did we left off?”

🎕

Atsushi starts seeing black flames at the fringes of his vision.

At first, it was too much for him to try to focus on his surroundings when the bloody timer on his palm retains his absolute fixation; but the flames lap around him. He could feel it, gradually, as the white noise around him dissolves.

The first one he notices flashes blue and a croak heralds its arrival. Atsushi panickedly turns around to face it, and finds his thought retrograding into quiescence. What stands in front of him is a trio of way-larger-than-normal frogs, with lustrous tattoo-like art for legs. 

Tattoos? For legs? Atsushi must have gone way out of his mind. But no matter how many times he blinks, the frogs and their tattoo-like legs stay right there. 

Atsushi pushed himself to stand upright on shaky legs, taking into the sight of the frogs who looked both non-threatening and lethal at the same time. “Do you guys have, like, something to do with this timer and the message on the phone?”

Despite Atsushi’s otherwise valiant efforts in delivering the question, none of his efforts was rewarded as the frogs continue to stare at him with threateningly dark eyes. The split-second match helps Atsushi to recognize further tattoo patterns on the frogs’ backs. 

And they are gradually brightening. Burning like flames.

The frog at the front of the trio formation stretches its webbed feet and looks ready to prance.

Atsushi doesn’t have time to think. His body reacts the best it does before his mind could spin; he runs.

Atsushi runs, the only thing in his mind being the frogs and the phone he hurriedly shoves into his pocket. His arms are flailing and his legs are cramping, still Atsushi runs and runs and runs. 

Those almost cartoony frogs mean him harm alright.

A blade surges past his left cheek. Atsushi could taste the smell of blood streaming past his left cheek. He stares up ahead and one frog has landed several feet away from him. It has just retracted its blood-tinged tongue.

And two more frogs are chasing him.

What kind of sick joke is this? Visual and auditory hallucinations, crows giving him a flip-phone with a message that doesn’t make sense, some badge with a vaguely edgy design that makes him hallucinate, and now being chased down by cartoon frogs? Has some authority figure in heaven finally tire of Atsushi’s pathetic attempts to stay alive and decide to spice things up as much as possible?

(... Pathetic attempts to stay alive?—)

Atsushi chokes back what little tears he might have spilt and absconded through the side alley next to him. The alley reeks of sewage water and food that has been rotting for more than three days, yet Atsushi finds his traitorous stomach rumbling at the stench.

No matter. If he doesn’t somehow outrun these ridiculous frogs his lungs will never take in any air ever again, his heart never got to beat ever again.

The alley twists and turns until Atsushi finds himself rushing towards a river canal. He turns back, and miraculously enough the frogs have disappeared behind him. 

Not that this makes things much better. He might still have those weird frogs on his trail, he still has no food in his stomach, and he might as well just jump into the river hoping it would bring him somewhere that makes sense, brings him home perhaps. 

Home… the word is a distant incarnation to Atsushi. Nothing concrete floats up to his mind at the mention of it. Amnesia? Trauma? Other bullshit magical reasons his mind is too shallow at the moment to think of? 

Atsushi heaves a deep sigh and allows himself to approach the river canal.

The sight here is almost normal compared to what he has just experienced. Looking down on the river almost gives him solace again, if not for the sudden searing pain in the middle of his palm. Atsushi opens up his left palm and there it is:

50:00

Right. The time limit, whatever that is supposed to mean. Atsushi clamps his hands over his eyes and wills himself not to look at the timer.

But what good does it do him? The timer won’t magically disappear. 

Atsushi steps slightly, slightly closer to the canal and stares deep into the clear water.

His rippled expression won’t speak, however.

“Seriously, what should I be d— Wait a minute…”

🎕

Kyouka tries typing one more new message on her phone. When the phone screen isn’t booting up with any notification, she clamps it shut with a huff.

“Can you reach Dazai yet?” Kunikida asks from somewhere behind her, probably battling Noises on her behalf.

“No, I have no idea where he could be.” Kyouka grits her teeth tight enough to shatter diamonds. It is one thing to be so out of luck that you couldn’t find a Partner as soon as you enter the Reaper’s Game, but it’s quite a different kind of misery to be promised to be hooked up to a Partner, then completely left out cold.

Even worse, now she’s dragging other Players to help her stay alive. Disgraceful.

“Stay close with us, Izumi,” A flash of a butcher’s knife glides across Kyouka’s sight. It is Yosano, who is battling a rhino-like Noise. “Without a Partner, you are completely defenceless here!”

“I know that. But none of you should be responsible for my life! Please, just…”

Kyouka’s voice trails off. Just do what? She’s the one who fails to get a Partner when every single Player that ever entered the game could find themselves one immediately, and she’s the one who these two have obliged themselves to protect when such actions are unnecessary. 

At this rate, there’s even the risk that Kunikida and Yosano will be Erased because of her… 

“Oi, that little girl over here! Why are you still standing there like a tiny doe?”

Kyouka raises her head to face the enemy with what she hopes is a terrifying enough expression. “Who— What do you want!”

“Huh? Is that much not obvious enough?” The speaker, a Reaper wearing an oversized black-coat and black cross belts across his chest, tilts his head at Kyouka with a teasing tone. “We are Reapers, and our responsibilities are to Erase every single one of you. It is our solitary purpose.”

“Must be sad, thinking the most you can do is committing homicide out here.” Kyouka lets herself edge closer and closer to a small grassy slope next to her, one that is located right next to a canal. Can she escape by waterway? She clutches her sword tighter, even when this earthly metal can do no damage to the abstract forms of the Noises or the Reapers.

“Ah, it must be sad for you, in turn, to assume our lives only contain that. After all, we are far less restrained, and at least don’t have to listen to a timer on our hand!”

Kyouka wants to throw the phone away. Towards the Reaper’s face or the river canal, she’s not quite sure. 

Somewhere to her right, Kunikida is yelling for her again. “Kyouka! You can’t just run off like that! Stay close to us!”

“Yeah, Izumi! I can’t protect or heal you if you are too far away for me to reach you!”

Kyouka closes her eyes. Visualizes the way Kunikida and Yosano are fighting against these monsters with their lives on the line and protecting her selflessly while they are at it. 

Protecting her selflessly. Kyouka wants to press those words into fine dust, scattering them across a wasteland so no one ever has to think about it again.

“Kunikida-san! Yosano-san! I am truly moved!” Kyouka cries, straining her throat to yell as loud as possible. “I am touched that you guys are willing to go so far for me when you could’ve just hidden!”

“Don’t be stupid, Kyouka! Even if this Reaper isn’t targeting you he’d start attacking us at some points!” 

“It doesn’t matter now, Kunikida-san.” Kyouka straightens her posture, and tries to wipe the impending smile off her lips. She’s standing at the very edge of the canal. This is all it’s going to take. “You guys can stop fighting soon.”

Kunikida finally has the chance to look back, to see where Kyouka is. “Kyouka, what are you talking abou—”

Kyouka jumps into the river.

🎕

Atsushi supposes he’s not at the risk of hunger-induced hallucinations, but he confesses that he has no guarantee of that. 

After all, right now he is staring at a pair of khaki trousers-wearing legs float down the river canal. 

It wouldn’t be strange, exactly, to see people floating down a river canal. What is strange is that there seems to be no resistance of any kind from the drowner— “drowner”?!— other than the occasional twitches of their feet.

This is not a scenario Atsushi would like to face other than the predicaments he is already involved in.

“Should… Should I save him?” Atsushi wonders out loud to himself. The question didn’t strike him as weird initially until it comes to life outside of his head. “Wait, what, what kind of question is that! Hold on!”

Several backstrokes, struggling in the water himself and dragging on the floating person’s torso, Atsushi manages to drag the drowning person back onto dry land. 

“Sir… what were you even…” Atsushi coughs drops after drops of water out of his throat, rubbing the water out of his eyes and attempting to take a good look at the person he saved. “Were you in an accident? Were you—”

Without any warning, the man Atsushi has just saved from the river springs up, almost unsettlingly like a jiangshi. Atsushi takes the chance to take note of his appearance, consisting of short merlot hair, light latte coat over a white shirt. Most notably, the man has bandages wrapped around both of his arms and somewhere below the scruff of his neck.

“Was I…? Wait, hold on,” the man frowns and redirects his gaze at Atsushi. “Did you just… Scoop me out of the water?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘scooped you up’, I did expend some, uh, efforts, to drag you out of the water.”

The man looks away from Atsushi and stares ahead as if lost in thought. Atsushi is starting to compare his own words with the ravings of lunatics with nightmares.

“Tch.”

“Huh?” Atsushi shrinks away just a little bit more, hopefully not flaunting his fear. “What kind of reaction is that? Why do you sound like you are criticizing m—”

“I’m not criticizing you, boy, I just have matters to attend to at the moment before you ruthlessly wrenched me out of the water. Which is a process that I would appreciate not to be interrupted because that person I promised to help is still lost to me. I’m starting to think she will arrive by waterway.”

“What exactly do you mean?” Atsushi asks, a note of doubt dancing delicately on the tip of his tongue. There are so many more questions ping-ponging in his head now, but would this drowning young man know any answer to them?

“Oh, just in case you are wondering, I wasn’t trying to drown myself,” the man glares at his watch. “I’d be insulted if anyone tries to imply that in any way, shape or form.”

“Then why exactly the hell would you just jump into the river like that? Surely this person who has matters to deal with you can’t possibly—”

“Open your right hand!”

“... Huh? What does that have to do with my hand?” Atsushi surveys his right hand. Thankfully, no red digits have been smeared across it. 

“Just be a darling and open it wide, would you?”

Atsushi gazes at the young man’s almost-most certainly untrustworthy smirk, and then back to his right hand. Most of the questions banging against his skull also warn of him not to trust someone so quickly.

Still, no harm could be done to this, right? His day has been crazy enough. If a somewhat well-dressed hobo that he just saved wants him to open his right hand, who is he to refuse at this point?

Atsushi obliges, extending his outstretched right hand towards the young man.

Plop. Something plastic hits Atsushi’s right hand.

Atsushi frowns.

“That’s, that’s the badge I threw away earlier!”

“Bingo, boy! I can’t believe a Player would be inane enough to think of throwing away their Player Pin. Don’t you know that any Player without their Player Pin could not survive any longer than fifteen minutes in the UG? Lucky enough for you that I found it and take it back to you before that time comes, don’t you think?”

“Fifteen minutes? But I was sure my timer reads—”

Atsushi lets out a yelp. The timer on his palm has just shifted from 03:24 to 08:24 in the blink of an eye.

“Do, do you mean…”

The young man nods, his lips locked in a smirk before he bends down a little to Atsushi’s eye level and the smile recedes into nothing. “Hadn’t it been my help, I guarantee that you will be Erased when that three minute counts down to four neat little zeroes.”

The sinister look immediately retreats into another brilliant smile. “However! Like I have just said, since you get it back, that is no longer a concern of yours!”

“It definitely still is!” Atsushi drags his left palm and mushes it towards the man’s face in a panic. “I only have five more minutes added to it! Didn’t you say I’ll be fine as long as I get back my, my…”

Atsushi looks back down at the skull badge in his right hand and mushes it towards the man’s face next. “And what do you mean by ‘Player’? Why is this a ‘Player Pin’? What the hell is happening!”

The man’s smile drops, and his frown almost radiates perplexing concern. “Oh boy, you know exactly nothing about the situation you are in, do you?”

“No! Nobody gave me an instruction manual or anything! Am I supposed to just assume everyone in Yokohama is like this!”

“If by Yokohama you are referring to RG Yokohama, then nope. You are in UG Yokohama instead, after all.”

Atsushi sits down hard onto the ground, hoping the pain brought by the impact will help him understand anything. He has failed to accumulate anything from that. 

The man lets out another almost-sadistic laugh and extends a hand to Atsushi. “What’s your name, for starters?”

“Na—Nakajima Atsushi.”

“Name’s Dazai Osamu. Now, since we don’t have much time, let me just put this as short as possi— and what is that funny thing you’re doing with your face?”

“Huh?” Atsushi mushes his cheeks together and twists them. Did he do anything weird? “Yo—You must be seeing things wrong. What were you going to say just now?”

“Right, let’s get back on topic. Atsushi-kun, you aren’t in the human realm anymore. If you were physically in Yokohama where normal people live, you’d be in Realground Yokohama. But just as I have mentioned, you are now in Underground Yokohama. This is where the Reapers’ Game takes place.”

“Reapers’ Game?”

“It’s a high-stakes life or death game where you, as Players, have to complete missions every day for a whole week, until it ends on day 7. This is why you have the timer on your palm, which informs you how much time you have to finish each day’s mission.” 

An explosion occurs somewhere in the background, and all the hair on Atsushi’s body stand on ends involuntarily. “So, I will have to—”

“Oh, and yeah, you have to fight against those Reapers who will summon Noises to try to Erase you. _Oh,_ and you can’t act alone. You need a Partner.” Dazai scratches the back of his head nonchalantly as if all the supernatural explanation he has just done is simply akin to just recounting what he had for breakfast. “Speaking of your Partner and my secondary business in the river, I think she should have finally come along.”

Dazai rubbernecks the general area of the river behind Atsushi almost dramatically, a skewered smile and excited pointing, so Atsushi turns to look for himself. 

Down the river towards them, a little girl who looks no older than fifteen, with purple ponytails, wearing a traditional red kimono with flowery designs, and a sinister, murderous-like intent written across her face, just drift towards them.

And behind her, a humanoid in pure black attire and web-like black wings— a Reaper?— is chasing right behind her, flanked by several other winged Noises.

🎕

“Is that the Partner you were speaking of, Dazai-san?” Kyouka easily establishes a grip onto the grass field on the shore with her sword and leaps out of the canal. She can worry about her appearance and mixtures of sewage stench staining on her later. 

“No doubt or suspense here, Izumi-kun! This is the Partner you will be having for the rest of your Reaper’s Game!” Dazai cheerfully presents the awkward boy with silver hair to his right and drags on Kyouka’s hand straight towards the boy’s hand. “No matter how you slice it, you two are a perfect match! Now, please connect with me through your Player Pins.”

The boy’s stature slumps. “By the way… these are badges, right? Why are they called ‘Player Pins’ instead?”

“I don’t know about the old geezer who names things around here, but I’d say ‘Player Pins’ definitely have a way better ring than ‘Player Badges’. Anyway, we have to do this now, unless you are okay with your timer finally blinking out.”

The boy hurriedly glares down at his left palm again, and hisses as 04:17 comes into view. Kyouka looks down on her own and it reads 02:43.

“First, please put your Player Pins onto my hands and grab my hands tight.”

Kyouka and the boy oblige, both putting their Player Pins between Dazai and their own hands. 

“Then, you two connect your own hands.”

Kyouka eagerly reaches out her hand, but the boy hesitates. Of all time.

“I—Izumi, is it? Are you sure you want to be a Partner to idiots like me?” The boy stares intensely into Kyouka’s eyes, despite the absolute inanity of his question. “I mean, unlike you and many others, I have no idea what I am doing here at all?”

 _We don’t have time for questions like that!_ is what Kyouka would have loved to scream, though she reins it in and extends her hand once more. “Yes, I’m sure.”

The boy wonders for another second.

Then he joins hands with her.

🎕

In a fraction of a heartbeat, Atsushi could feel the way strong gusts of wind— no, just pure energy of some form that travels from the tip of his soles to his head. 

It lasts for only one second, and then it is over. Dazai releases both of their hands and gestures for them to look at their Player Pins.

Atsushi stares into his Pin. Rather than the pure black background adorned merely with a white skull as of earlier, his Pin has now turned into cyan, with the image of a white tiger’s head imprinted across its middle. Atsushi steals a glance at Izumi’s, whose Pin has turned into an iris purple background with the intricate imagery of a white-periwinkle swordswoman.

“Hey, I don’t even know your real name just yet though?”

Atsushi clutches his Pin tight in his hands and nods. “Nakajima Atsushi.”

Izumi nods. “Izumi Kyouka.”

“Okay, Kyouka-chan, let us start our very first fight alongside each other, shall we?”

Before Kyouka can respond, Dazai interrupts with a hearty laugh. “Ah, look at you! Wondering if you can be a proper Partner one second, raring to go kill Noises the next. Can’t say I don’t appreciate the courage, though.”

Then he puts a hand on their shoulders, leans down in whispers. “Now your Player Pins are unsealed, so you can use the Psych of your choice. Or, to put it simply, it will enable you to use the superpower of whatever is your greatest wish before being transferred here.”

“My greatest wish?” Atsushi examines his Pin. Has he ever has a ‘greatest wish’ of any sort involving a white tiger specifically is something completely out of his reach at the moment. Nevertheless, he takes the Pin into his hand and clutches it tightly, ready to let loose. “Whatever. Kyouka-chan, if you are ready, I will—”

A clear plop onto the ground.

Atsushi returns his attention to this new Partner to his right.

She shudders.

“Kyouka-chan, why did you just throw your Pin away?”

🎕

It can’t be. And yet it is reality. 

That swordswoman on her Pin, she can only possibly be—

“Girl! You don’t have any time for breakdowns right now!”

When Kyouka comes to again, Dazai has already pressed her Pin back onto her hand, as a purple aura surrounds her.

Kyouka turns sharply on her heels and there she is, the ghostly swordswoman on her Pin, brandishing her nightmarishly long sword behind her.

This can’t be… and there’s no way that—

“In that case, I will have to do my best too!” 

Atsushi presses on his own Pin, and before Kyouka can protest that, can protest the absolute unfairness of this situation, can protest having this _monster_ be her fighter and defender—

—the cheery boy has vanished in a flash of blue lights, leaving behind a snow-white tiger.

The tiger doesn’t hesitate at all, rushing to meet the first Noise— a decently large one shaped like a shark.

Kyouka gazes into the deep cyan of the sky, muttering to herself. “Have I made the right decision? Joining this game?”

“Oh, you don’t know that, Izumi-san?” Dazai quirks a curious eyebrow at Kyouka’s countenance, then looks back at the swordswoman phantom behind her. “Nobody has ever made the choice to join this game. If anything, the game chose you.”

“The game chose me?”

“And no matter what choices you have made or what life you have led previously, they are all defunct now.” 

A hearth has made its home in Kyouka’s heart now, so Kyouka looks ahead and focuses on anywhere else other than her own. 

Kunikida and Yosano must have defeated the Noises at some point, seeing that the duo are now healing and recuperating to the side, and neither the Reaper or his Noises seem to pay attention to them anymore. 

Kyouka bores into the offending Reaper’s eyes and finds nothing but pure hatred there. She hopes with the burning in her heart that her eyes radiate the same malice.

She raises her sword, and a strong gall follows. The scent of snow isn’t lost on her as she plunges her own sword into the nearest Noise. Jab, twist. A second sword joins in, no doubt the one from her monster. 

No matter, at the juncture between life and death isn’t the time to consider detest the monster who is on your side.

They both pull back their swords, and the Noise collapses, struggling to stand up again. Kyouka strikes it again, right in the middle of its eyes, and does it twice more for good measure.

The Noise vanishes, traces of black smoke sucked into a void no one can see.

Kyouka observes her surroundings and awaits her next opponent.

To her right, the white tiger pounces onto a different Noise, one shaped like a rhino again, scratches on its back as the Noise stomps back in retaliation. Another joins in the mayhem with a bite on the tiger’s neck.

The tiger roars, but no blood comes out of the wound; if anything, it is rapidly healing already, and the tiger turns to deal with the new Noise.

The duo continues to engage in their deadly dance, as somewhere on Kyouka’s periphery a familiar voice chimes in.

“Oi, if that isn’t my favourite slug in black! How has it been, thinking up new ways to murder me?”

“Shut your piehole, shitty mackerel!” 

With no other Noise in sight and the Reaper stalled, Kyouka aims her sight at the Yokohama Marine Tower— their destination of the day, which they have to reach within today if they hope to survive to Day 2. She takes a look at her timer again, the red digits flashing a disappointing 48:25 with the smaller digits 22 on it.

Kyouka picks up her pace, needing to—

“We’ve done it!”

Kyouka startles, raising her head to see two boys— one with orange hair and plain white sweater, and one with butterscotch hair in a blue overall— rushing down the hill towards Kyouka.

“We’ve made it! There’s no need for us to be afraid anymore!” Sweater boy beams a smile Kyouka can’t imagine possible.

“Tanizaki-san and I have completed today’s missions, so there will be no need for any other fighting either!” 

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Kenji-kun!”

“It’s no big deal, Tanizaki-san!”

The two boys scratch the backs of their hands and face Kyouka, who must have stared at them with an awkward expression. “Uh… Is there anything else we could do to help around here or… ?”

“No! You two have done excellently!” Applause booms louder and louder until Dazai comes into Kyouka’s line of sight again. “Now that we have won for the day already, I’m sure tiny slug over there would understand the situation and leave us alone.”

Said Reaper crosses his arms and glares at the rest of them, but, with a swipe of his head, the Noises the tiger is battling vanish into nowhere.

“I will get you all good tomorrow… If you don’t want to die too ugly, do yourself a favour and stay away from that mackerel!” 

“I’m sure these kids can make their own decisions on who they want to be with!” Dazai calls after the departing Reaper, then surveys the rest of the Players. “Now that we have some free time, why don’t we— oh, where’s Atsushi-kun?”

At this point, Kunikida and Yosano have also rejoined their little group, and despite Dazai’s somewhat serious inquiry Kunikida immediately responds by punching him in the face.

“Where do you think he is! He’s right behind you and still a tiger!”

“Is that so?”

Kyouka turns around herself and— surely enough, the moonlit white tiger just now is still rampaging around, pawing and biting on the ground and thin air. 

… Is this truly her Partner for the whole week, or a testimony to the misfortune she will bring to everyone around her?

“Ah, that is just a small matter to handle here. Nothing big, you guys keep going with what you were talking about!”

Tanizaki mutters, almost on cue. “We were just gathering around because you said you wanted to say something…”

🎕

The first sensation Atsushi could feel is a small touch of coolness on his forehead.

Then the sensation of free-falling; but rather than an intense, high-speed free fall one would expect, all Atsushi could feel is floating back down, gracefully, as if the law of gravity doesn’t apply to him for a moment.

It almost feels like safety, like—

“I don’t like boys like you in particular!”

Atsushi’s head hits the pavement.

“Ouch!”

Light footsteps approach him. And a hand extends to him. “There, are you okay?”

Atsushi pries his eyelids open by sheer force of will. The spread-over mosaic in front of his eyes slowly materializes into a girl, with long indigo ponytails and a red kimono.

“Kyou, Kyouka-chan?”

“You… sort of lost control earlier,” Kyouka explains as she finally pulls Atsushi to his wonky, still shaky feet. “Like, you activated your Psych, but for some reason, your Psych just keeps raging on as a tiger instead of letting you return to human form after today’s game is already done.”

“Already done? But we didn’t get to the—”

“Only one Player has to complete the daily mission for the rest of us to pass as well.” Kyouka’s eyes mist over as if on cue, turning her face sideways. “This is the worst, we shouldn’t have…”

Atsushi looks down on his own body. Scratches and stretches of bruises pepper his arms and legs, though they apparently have left no concrete pain on his limbs. His body could still move freely.

Not his heart though. Or his soul, for that matter.

“Kyouka-chan… I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

“Don’t say such silly things. All of us were chosen by the game for different reasons. It’s not your fault or my fault that we were the only surviving Players without a Partner at that time.” 

“Still, the problem of my Psych must have been an annoyance to you.” Atsushi bends down. “I’m sorry for any inconvenience that I have brought!” 

“It’s really fine, I was just—”

“Okay! If you two are done bonding, then you are free to listen to me talk now, aren’t you?”

Dazai walks up to the duo with his trademark smile, a smile that Atsushi is starting to suspect is putting more fear in his heart rather than reassurance. “Um, I suppose we are… ?”

“Right. To be concise, though, you guys aren’t exactly having the worst first day ever in the history of UG Yokohama’s Reapers’ Game history. If anything, you have an okay beginning!”

“I have a monster as the Psych that I will use to fight,” Kyouka dejectedly points at Atsushi. “And Atsushi can turn into a tiger without the ability to switch back unless you step in.”

A tremor wracks over Atsushi’s face, pulling his cheeks into a painful spasm. “You… Kyouka-chan, what did you mean by that?”

“What I mean is that, just now, you only managed to turn back into a human because this,” A small note of disgust creeps into Kyouka’s voice, accompanied by a twist of her brows. “... Because Dazai used whatever power he has on you by tapping on your head. I’m not sure how we can turn you back otherwise.”

“Tapping on my head?”

“Oh, really, physical contact is all it needs. It doesn’t have to be your forehead…”

But Atsushi is no longer listening. 

( _that small touch of coolness_ )

“Um, Atsushi-kun? Are you listening?”

( _that sensation of free-falling_ )

“... There’s a Noise over your head!”

“Ahh!” Atsushi screams and presses down on his Pin. When nothing happens, Atsushi just barely registers the feeling of his bang being dragged on by Dazai.

“Dazai-san, what are you doing?”

“Getting your attention? Your mind was so obviously flying off to nowhere.” Dazai huffs and gives the duo a semi-serious look. “Did you all catch on to what I told you to do in the Reaper’s Game? You know, they are everything you have to know if you want to survive in the Game.”

Kyouka gazes sideways off, and Atsushi comes to the realization that she is staring at her Player Pin attached to her golden belt. “Always trust your Partner, use your own Psych properly, don’t let any Noise capture you. Eliminate as many Noises as possible. Complete each daily mission with the most you can, and never just sit around expecting other Players to cover for you in fights or completing missions.”

“Right, and lastly?”

“... Put unwavering trust in what you said and will say.”

“We are good!” Dazai gives Atsushi’s forehead a pat, messing up his front bangs. “You kids are definitely intelligent and strong enough to clear the Game. I will see you guys tomorrow!”

The sun— or perhaps only an imitation of it exclusive to the UG— slowly set lower and lower, closer and closer to the horizon. Yet even without this natural light source, Atsushi can see very, very clearly the increasingly furious expression on Kyouka’s face.

“Kyouka-chan… Did I do something wrong again?”

“It’s not you. It’s just what I’m only getting just now.”

“Only getting just now? Was it something Dazai-san said? Or something the other Players do?”

“The other Players are all clean as far as I know. Hell, there are only four other Players we know of at the moment.” 

“Then what’s bugging you?”

Kyouka crosses her arms and hugs herself tightly, so tight Atsushi worries that she would have difficulty breathing. “You, you don’t get it, do you? And I don’t think the other four seem to get it either.”

“And it is… ?”

“... Dazai Osamu is an enemy, not an ally.”

A sparkle flies off the top of Atsushi’s head. “You, what do you mean by that? Wasn’t he the one who helped to turn me back to normal? And to be quite honest… Earlier I threw away my Player Pin like an idiot, and hadn’t it been Dazai-san swimming into the river to help me retrieve it… I wouldn’t even be talking with you right now.”

“I understand that, but no matter how you slice it, he doesn’t really have our best interests at heart.” Kyouka starts walking away from the bank, and Atsushi hurriedly follows. “The only people present in this UG realm within the Reaper’s Game are either Players or Reapers… What does that say about him? He’s not a Player, so he must be a Reaper, in some ways.”

“But, Kyouka-chan, Reapers’ objectives are to eliminate us, right? Dazai-san did everything to keep us alive, and never even try to—”

“That doesn’t matter, Atsushi. The fact still stands that he participates in ensuring the Game runs smoothly, right?” 

“But he doesn’t hurt—”

Kyouka turns sharply on her heels. “Atsushi. I understand you might have some sense of attachment to him because he helped you. But that doesn’t matter. He’s not a Player, so he’d definitely an enemy to us in some ways. 

“Think about it; he never really explain the full truth of the Reaper’s Game, only telling us in vague terms the things we have to do. How much isn’t he telling us? And don’t you think it’s fishy that he saved you when he’s got nothing to gain from doing so and doesn’t even know you? He’s not going to have a harder job or life just because he lets you die.” 

“If anything, what you said just proves he’s kind—”

“No. It proves that his job here is to make sure the game runs smoothly, and part of it is to ensure all the Players on this field have a Partner and can participate accordingly.”

Atsushi’s stops. There is a sense of truth in Kyouka’s words, no matter how hard he wants to deny it.

But if this man does want him any harm, why… Just why does he feel familiar? Atsushi didn’t let that feeling flood him during the fight earlier, but right now it is coming back. The gentle pat on his forehead. The borderline intentionally playing with his hair. 

It is all so familiar. Yet Atsushi just couldn’t recall anything, and Kyouka’s anger is still palpable. 

“... You might be right, but I refuse to think ill of others so early on here. Plus, judging on the fact that you addressed him early on and was looking for a Partner under him, there’s no way it is all evil in him like the rest of the Reapers.”

Kyouka’s shoulders slump, the tension going out of her body like a methodically released spring-trap. 

“Fine. I just hope you and I won’t fail this game. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the price of failing the missions or being devoured by the Noises.”

Another feeling tugging at Atsushi’s earlobes, settling down at the pit of his guts. “Say, Kyouka-chan?”

“Hmm?”

“What did you feel when you come into this Game? Was there, like, a guide who gave you instructions about the Game?”

Kyouka nods. “Yeah, there was one. I did have a Reaper who introduced to me the basics of this game and what I need to do. Though, I found Dazai completely by recommendation by another Player named Kunikida when the topic of needing a Partner was brought up.” Her frowns deepen. “And if I’m not mistaken, I recall that he has mentioned it is normal for every Player to have a Reaper who acts as a guide for them into the Game.”

“That’s weird.” Atsushi scratches his head, but no matter how hard he strains himself, it won’t come back to him. “There was never any Reaper to guide me into this. When I arrived, I’ve already lost memories about who I was before the game.”

“You forgot everything?”

“Yeah, I forgot everything aside from my name.”

“That doesn’t make any sense…” Kyouka shakes her head. “Not that anything about this Game itself makes any sense at all either.”

 _That’s true, nothing makes sense. Lost memories that are only connected with vague concepts like moonlight and chemicals and intense fear, deja vu of knowing someone who is possibly working for the Reapers and isn’t a wholehearted ally… On top of that, no instructions for the Game before participation like everyone else._

“I guess we’ll just have to bear through it, toughen it out for the following seven days.”

_Can it be that simple? Surviving for seven days?_

Before Atsushi has the chance to think over, again, the mysteries surrounding his circumstances in this inscrutable Game, darkness envelopes him.

And thus, the prelude of a story concludes with darkness yet again.

**Reaper’s Game: Day 1 - Concluded**

**70 → 58 Players Remain**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just as a forewarning, some of the events in the fic will parallel/call back to "the world ends with you" as well, so if you want to play the game blind u might want to play it before touching this fic w/ a ten-foot pole www
> 
> comments and kudos are appreciated!!!


	2. Day 2 - It takes two to tango (against a backdrop of carnage)

… 

… 

… 

“Those who were similar to you weep at their weaknesses, but you do not even possess the shame necessary to change yourself for the better.”

 _That’s not true_ … 

“People like you only deserve to meet a fitting end at the bottom of a sewer… No, not even that…”

_That’snottruethat’snottruethat’snottrue—_

☾

Atsushi wakes up.

It is quite an unceremonious process, choking off a building scream just now, as he springs free from what is supposedly a chair and hits face-first onto the concrete ground.

A hand extended to him. Kyouka. “There, are you okay?”

Atsushi grabs her hand and sits back onto the chair, slumping into it. “To be quite honest… No. I was having a nightmare just now.”

A slight frown creases Kyouka’s face. “What kind of nightmare? Stuff that can’t be true, or… ?”

“I wish I could say it’s just stuff that can’t be true.” Atsushi shakes his head a bit more, to wring away the dizziness still lingering in his head. 

Then it occurs to him.

“Are we in Day 2 already?”

“Yeah. It seems like as soon as the mission for the day is finished, we are placed directly into Day 2.”

“So, do we have a mission assigned already?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been refreshing my phone and no new message pops up yet.”

Atsushi slumps back into his seat, one hand slackened over his eyes. “That’s good at least…”

The crowd around them go on with their daily lives, and Atsushi studies them, even though no matter how much effort he has exerted their faces remain featureless and unmemorable. 

“Kyouka-chan, do you have trouble with being face-blind?”

“Face-blind? You mean, like, with all these people around us?”

“Yeah.”

“Not really? They just look like… people to me. Can’t say that most of them stand out to me particularly well at all, though.”

They fall back into an uncoordinated lull. Atsushi turns on his own phone to check the mailbox. No new messages.

He opens the message from yesterday again.

“... I think I really messed up yesterday.”

Kyouka shuts off her own flip-phone with a huff and leans back. “You don’t have to keep saying that… when you aren’t even responsible for this.”

“I know you are doing your best to be nice, Kyouka-chan, and I really appreciate it.” Atsushi leans over towards the table, crossing one hand to grip at the other arm like there’s still a phantom Noise biting down on it. “But the fact remains that I messed up a lot. I threw away my own Pin, I used my Psych pretty wrongly, and I didn’t so much as making an effort to complete the mission.”

“Nonsense. It’s not like either of us gets to try before somebody already did it. Plus, if you feel so bad about this, we just need to do our best in the following days to prove we care, don’t we?”

“Yeah.”

The tide of silence is always lapping at Atsushi’s ankles.

“Kyouka-chan, since you know about the rules of the game… Do you know why we are here?”

“No, I have no idea.” Kyouka peers into her cup on the table—is that her cup? Is any of these their possession at all?—like it will show some omens she’s been waiting for any time now. “I only remember rather vague details here and there on what my life was like before coming here. As far as I’m concerned, I might as well be amnesiac like you.”

“You might say so, Kyouka-chan, but didn’t you show quite a lot of resistance against your own Psych? That swordswoman? Is it related to your past?”

All of a sudden, a storm descends on Kyouka’s countenance. Her hands grasp around the strip of ribbon around her kimono harder until it looks ready to unwind.

Atsushi unconsciously squats away. “I’m, I’m sorry if I brought up something I shouldn’t.”

“It’s nothing.” Kyouka nodded faintly, as she let her hands unfurl from the ribbons.

 _It’s nothing_. Yet Kyouka says it with ground teeth, with the anger and disgust barely disguised as apathy. And she lets the silence reign over them again. 

Or could have, because the next second both of their phones beep.

“New mission!” Atsushi yells as he struggles to grasp at his phone, bouncing off from his hand the moment he retrieves it from his pockets. Kyouka stifles a laugh.

“So, what is the new mission?” 

Atsushi reads the message out loud:

_Reaper’s Game Day 2 Mission Objective:_

_Retrieve the Golden Feather Amulet_

_Time limit: 24 hours_

Just as Atsushi is finished reading it, another blazing scar imprints across his left hand. And there it is again, the damned timer.

“Golden Feather Amulet? I’ve never heard of anything like that.” Atsushi said with a note of unease, turning to Kyouka in search of her reactions. “What do you think about this, Kyouka-chan?”

“I’ve never heard much about amulets, much less one that has such a specific name.” Kyouka closes her eyes and leans back until she can gaze into the sky. “Not to mention, I’ve never heard of whatever this golden feather could be…”

“Well, I guess we will just to try to find it out as we go! Since neither of us has been Yokohama residents, I think it can’t do us much harm to familiarize ourselves with the neighbourhood!”

Kyouka nods and gets off her seat, gesturing for Atsushi to lead the way. 

Atsushi makes way for a souvenir store two streets away. After all, what better way to start with a tourist guidebook that comes with a map of the entire city? Kyouka joins Atsushi in viewing the map, noting down notable landmarks like the Gaiety Theatre, the Sacred Hearts Cathedral, Kodomonokuni Theme Park and the Nogeyama Zoo.

“A zoo? If the amulet is supposedly shaped like a golden feather, maybe it could be some kind of souvenir from the zoo?” Atsushi flips through the guidebook back and forth, attempting to find anything familiar to a golden shade to no avail. 

“We have no idea about what this amulet is, but it does seem like our current best bet is to look up somewhere that might have birds,” said Kyouka, fixing an unnerving stare at a solitary image of a crane inside the guidebook’s page about said zoo. No matter how hard she looks, however, the feathers on it do not turn a shade closer to gold.

“Great! Let’s head there then!” 

☾

Fortunately for the duo, despite the somewhat daunting size of Yokohama—containing eighteen wards and a slum city that is so huge, one would be forgiven if they found themselves lost inside it—their current location is merely one ward away from their destination. In fact, after some more fact-checking, they found out that their walk to that point is only a short nine-minute walk. 

“And after we have passed Yamashita Park we—”

Bang! Before Atsushi could stop himself in his tracks, a hard plane of glass-like material hits him in the face. Or, to be more precise, _he_ hits it with his face.

“Atsushi! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Atsushi gives his cheek a pat and faces forward again. “But what did I just hit… ?”

Kyouka takes a few steps right next to Atsushi and reaches out a hand. When nothing but atmosphere welcomes her, Kyouka presses just a bit further.

And there she feels it. An invisible wall.

“There’s a wall in front of us.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you what it is… But it would explain why you just seemingly hit yourself on something hard. I wonder where it begins and where it ends?”

With that, Kyouka starts moving left.

“Kyouka-chan, where are you going?”

“I’m going to test out how far the wall goes.” Kyouka calls back from between a small street she is in. 

“It’s dangerous to just go off on your own like that!” Atsushi calls from behind, his asleep legs starting to run. “Let me accompany y—”

“There will be no need for that.”

Kyouka starts and looks back to where Atsushi is standing.

Right in front of Atsushi stands a woman in a suit, slightly shorter than Atsushi in height and wearing her blond hair in a bun atop her head. What truly stands out about her however isn’t any of the human features; rather, it is the obvious pair of decently big black Reaper wings behind her back.

“You are a Reaper?” Atsushi pulls out his Pin.

“Calm yourself down first, boy. I am a Reaper, but not the kind of Reaper with Noises that you have to fight throughout the week.” The woman does a graceful bow. “Name’s Higuchi Ichiyo. I’m a Support Reaper who is currently guarding the boundary between Yamashita Park and the Yokohama Marine Tower.”

“Guarding the boundary? Why do you need to guard the boundary?” asks Atsushi.

“Does that require any concrete reasoning beyond the fact that the wall is part of the Game?” answers Higuchi, an air of almost casualness spreading from her words. “This wall is merely a part of the Game, just as the Noises you have to fight is part of the Game. They are all obstacles you have to face against to prove you have the will and ability to win the Game.”

“Alright, so what’s the requirement?” Atsushi slowly lets his Pin-carrying hand down, but a sense of danger and paranoia still dances precariously over his head. 

“Right, the requirement for clearing my wall here.” Higuchi gives a small nod, closes her eyes for perhaps a whole minute before words slither out of her once more.

“The requirement for clearing this wall is to offer me the cutest plushie you can find in this area.”

“... Come again?”

Higuchi points somewhere behind Atsushi and he turns around, gaze wandering about before Higuchi pulls on his arm, drags him to Kyouka and points at a rabbit charm hanging from her neck.

“There, I will be even more specific. Just give me a rabbit plushie and I will clear the wall, ‘kay?”

“You want us. To give you a rabbit plushie,” says Kyouka.

“Yes.”

“How will we get it?” asks Atsushi, palming around his trouser pockets for the hypothetical existence of a wallet. “We don’t even have any money on us—”

“Atsushi, wait. It looks like I do have some.”

Atsushi stares incredulously at the several banknotes on Kyouka’s hand, their existence perhaps being something as hard to grasp as a bar of soap in the shower for Atsushi. “Where did you get all this?”

“Erasing Noises gives you money. With that said, if you have fought and Erased any Noises on Day 1, you should have some money too.”

Atsushi keeps his wary scowl at Higuchi while he finally finds his wallet, opens it and reaches into it.

Atsushi finds himself fifty dollars from the wallet.

“Well, now that you have confirmed I’m not lying, could you just go do your errand already? It won’t be pretty if you would just like to keep arguing with me instead of completing the objective, you know?” Higuchi spares them another cavalier scoff and settles herself against a nearby street lamp, humming an unidentifiable tune.

Atsushi looks between his fifty dollars and Kyouka’s probably-worth-several-hundred-dollars banknotes and flinches. “Does that mean, you’ve been fighting Noises by yourself even before having a Psych?”

“I tried to help Kunikida-san and Yosano-san to fight them, that’s all. My sword doesn’t really do much damage against them.” Kyouka turns back and gestures to a street brimming with boutiques and accessory stores. “Shall we start there? It looks the most likely to sell something like plushies around here.”

“Oh, sure.”

☾

They end up traversing the street almost casually, barging into every store with a pastel lighting or containing crane games. Atsushi tries his luck several times at a pretty large crane game arcade, but none of the rabbit plushies inside them seems willing to depart from their brethren.

“Ah, we are already half an hour down.” Atsushi glowers at the timer. “I thought we could get to the zoo as early as possible, but now…”

Kyouka studies her rabbit charm pendant. Atsushi watches her study it, her fingers running up the wrinkles acquired from perhaps years of use, looking almost melancholic at the missing left eye.

“If we really can’t find one, maybe I could just give this one to her.”

“That won’t do, Kyouka-chan. This thing is important to you, isn’t it?”

“What makes you think so?”

“Gut instincts, mostly. But I’m not exaggerating when I say you study it like it’s a precious gift for you to remember someone by.”

Kyouka purses her lips and looks aside, into the crowded streets, into an emptiness that Atsushi knows with all of his soul that he will have no right to pry into. 

“... It’s okay. I can hand it over.”

“But wait! Maybe it’s not even big enough to qualify as a plushie to her?” Atsushi tries to push Kyouka’s hand away, even if he can’t deny the fact that they are precariously nearing the end of the street, and there’s no plushie that has ever so much as left a shadow along their eyelids. 

“We can still try— Wait! There’s one more store there!”

Atsushi pulls Kyouka with him and starts running. What little reluctance Kyouka holds evaporates as rows of teddy bears and soft animals come into sight.

And in the back row sits two rabbit plushies.

“Let’s buy both of them just in case!”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.” Kyouka scrounges her money out to pay when Atsushi suddenly grabs her by the arm.

“Hey, Kyouka-chan? Promise me you won’t do something like that again, okay?”

Kyouka frowns, and attempts to give Atsushi a shrug meant to be casual and flippant. “It was just one small pendant, Atsushi.”

Atsushi pouts. _This boy can pout?_ “Promise me anyway?”

Kyouka sighs, nodding wearily in the end. “Promise.”

☾

“There, I appreciate you two giving me the choice to pick what colour I like, I really do.” Higuchi smiles as she all but grabs the pink rabbit plushie away from Kyouka’s iron-tight grip. Kyouka pouts, though she hides it with some half-hearted efforts by burying her face into the scruff of the other rabbit plushie.

“Now then, the wall is cleared! You might proceed as you wish.”

Higuchi flies away with her plushie— burying her face into its scruff just as Kyouka did— and Atsushi takes a cautious step forward.

No invisible wall. He heaves a hearty sigh of relief. “We should keep going now.”

“Yeah, we do. Let’s get to the zoo.”

Even at a time closer to noon, the zoo is brimming with children, bouncing around and yelling around. Kyouka avoids getting into the children’s tracks the best she can, while Atsushi stumbles past the horde of kids hesitantly, as if one decisive step would trample a child to death.

“Kyouka-chan!” Atsushi yells after evading yet another group of kids wearing animal costumes. “Do you already know where the souvenirs are in the zoo?”

“I’ve memorized that map already.”

“Okay! Let’s go!”

The souvenir shop, just as the rest of the zoo, is packed to the brim with screaming children and merchandise strewn across the ground. Kyouka and Atsushi get down each shelf looking for any souvenir relatively related to birds; birds-watching field guide, bird plushies, bird key accessories.

Despite the best of their efforts, however, not a single piece of golden feather has ever manifested. The most they could find are perfectly ordinary pictures of birds with yellow and orange plumage, and none of the toys or plushies so much has a patch of gold anywhere on their body.

“Maybe we took things too literally?” Atsushi said, having given up on his pile of plushies while Kyouka continues reading through every page of the birdwatching guide books. “Kyouka-chan, maybe we can try to—”

“You two over there! How’s it going!”

Atsushi and Kyouka quickly swivel to the voice’s direction, momentarily forgetting their respective stash of findings in preparations for fights.

Kyouka’s grip on her sword softens before she tucks it back into the sheath. “Ah, it’s Kunikida-san and Yosano-san.”

Atsushi relaxes and gazes forward to get a better look of the approaching duo. Walking at a brisker pace and upholding a tense posture is a man with shoulder-length matcha green hair tied into a neat ponytail, wearing a pair of glasses and suit in a similar shade of matcha green. Behind him strides a woman with violet hair stylized as a bob cut, wearing a canary-gold butterfly hair-clip, a white shirt and short skirt. What stands out about her isn’t just the more lenient pace and cavalier attitude, but also the bag hanging off her right side; sharply contrasting with her Partner, who is only holding a notebook.

Kyouka walks up to greet the man. “I know you’ve probably heard it way too many times already, Kunikida-san, but thank you for saving me back then.”

Kunikida gives a stiff laugh and a terse nod. “Honestly, Kyouka, you don’t have to keep bringing that up. Us Players should look after each other.”

“Plus, the two of us haven’t exactly done much, seeing that ultimately you just went and found Dazai all on your own. At that point we were just fighting for our lives.” Yosano adds, and Atsushi notes how her smile seems equally stiff.

“Still, without you, I wouldn’t have reached him and Atsushi safely.”

Question swirl in Atsushi’s head, unable to find a notch they could fit comfortably into without answers. “Kyouka-chan, what exactly happened to you before we met and became Partners?”

“Like I’ve mentioned before, while being transferred to the Game, I had a Reaper who told me about all the rules and stuff about the Game. Then I woke up at the street and before I could start doing anything, some Noises were chasing me up.

“So I ran and ran and ran, and despite the best efforts I have in sword-fighting those pursuers, my sword only has little effect on them. Kunikida-san and Yosano-san found me then. They pretty much protected me the whole way until I found you at the river bank.”

Yosano gives a flippant hand-wave. “Really, Izumi, your praises are too much. Regardless, it is all in the past and we should focus back on our task, shouldn’t we?”

“Right, we still haven’t found the pendant,” Kyouka said. “Have you guys tried out the zoo as well? Nothing?”

“Nah. We thought maybe it’s straight-up really just a feather-made kind of accessory so we tried to search up even the real birds after looking through the souvenir store like you have just done.” Kunikida slumps as he explains. “Nothing, we’ve come up with absolutely nothing.”

One thing springs up from Atsushi’s mind. “Um, can we ask Da—”

Kunikida shakes his head, in a both dejected and surprisingly condescending tone. “I don’t want to dampen your hope, Nakajima, but Dazai’s not allowed to interfere directly with how the Players are performing in-game.”

“What exactly can he do then?”

“From what we’ve gathered just yesterday, the most he could do is to help Players form pacts, help stray Players find Partners, lead Players away from harm if they aren’t Partnered with anyone yet,” said Yosano. “And anyway, his help is not _that_ valuable when you consider how he helped Izumi…”

Yosano trails off and turns towards the zoo’s exit. “Anyway, since it doesn’t look like this zoo has what we want, why don’t we search somewhere else?”

“But, Yosano-san, if we stop searching here where else do you suggest we can go?” asks Atsushi.

“Well, we don’t have a pre-selected pool to pick an answer out of.” Yosano paces back and forth, a quirked-up smirk in amusement or mockery of their situation, Atsushi can’t quite tell. “With that said, I suppose there’s no way the Game Master would be unfair enough to set the amulet’s hiding spot somewhere too hidden, as that would be too unfair for us Players who are not familiar with every inch of Yokohama.”

“So we keep looking through popular tourist locations and other landmarks in Yokohama,” said Kyouka, taking out the Yokohama tourist guide book from Atsushi’s bag. She spreads the map open so everyone could get a fair look at the map together. 

Atsushi peruses every detail of the tourist landmarks, but in spite of his best effort in committing them all to his memories, nothing in his mind could quite pinpoint what they need. 

“What if we were going about it the wrong way? Maybe it’s not exactly a bird?” Kunikida takes out a palm-sized notebook from his pockets and starts flipping through its pages, capping open a pen and starts writing. “There are quite some other items that might have feathers attached to them, like dreamcatcher replicas commonly found in accessory stores, or perhaps it is an omamori that is shaped like a feather?”

Yosano claps Kunikida’s shoulder with a derisive snort. “Any omamori is shaped vaguely enough to resemble a so-called feather then! If you are going to think that we have to somehow find a golden omamori, we might as well just give up. There are so many damned omamori around here, just any accessory store or boutiques have them too.” 

“But none of them would be temple-issued, so they shouldn’t count for—”

“But the Reapers specified ‘golden feather’ and ‘amulet’, right? What exactly are the chances that we are looking for a specific omamori that is shaped like a feather and not, perhaps, an actual golden feather meant to be used as an amulet?” asks Atsushi.

Kyouka turns to Kunikida. “Kunikida-san, just how many Players are still around?”

“Last time I checked, there should still be around fifty at the very least. We’ve only seen two Players get Erased prior to coming to Nishi-Ward here. Hard to say if anyone else has been Erased while we are here though.”

“Do you think it is possible to gather them around and cooperate with one another to look for it through the entire Yokohama? Yokohama is big, but maybe if all fifty of us look over every location we can have just enough time to find it.”

Kunikida shakes his head. “Yosano and I have both considered the viability of this plan but… we can’t. First, it’s hard to gather every single Player in a town as big as Yokohama and as many as fifty-something Players. Second, not every single Player will be willing to cooperate.”

“Why aren’t they willing to cooperate?” asked Atsushi. “All of us just want to survive through the Game, right? Isn’t cooperation the best way out, since one Player’s success in the mission means automatic pass for everyone else?”

Kunikida frowns a little, and pushes his glasses up, though the gesture couldn’t hide Atsushi from seeing that he has looked away in some kind of latent unease. “Atsushi, Kyouka, do you know how exactly this game operates?”

Kyouka speaks before Atsushi could. “Players have to complete daily missions in order to survive through a day, and doing so includes defeating Noises, purchasing items necessary to clear certain requirements, and engaging with the UG environment. Once one of the Players have completed the objective, all the other Players have an automatic pass to the next day. Players who survive through the whole week got to leave the Game.”

“Your understanding isn’t exactly wrong, Kyouka, but it is an inherently flawed understanding of its workings.”

Kyouka starts. “And how is it flawed?”

“Kyouka, the Players of this Game don’t just win for surviving through seven days. It is quite a simple thing to do if you know how to avoid all the Noises, wait for the other Players to complete missions, and avoid any other obstacles that might be posted by others. Here’s the thing; the criterion for winning the Game doesn’t hinge on your street smarts.” Kunikida leans down a little to look Kyouka and Atsushi in the eye, and Atsushi feels a distinct pall crash through his backside. “Players win depending on their ranks.”

“Ranks?”

“Ranks is, put simply, a concept regarding the outcome of Players who survive all the way to day seven. Depending on criteria like the number of Noises Erased and missions accomplished, all the surviving Players will be ranked.”

Atsushi swallows. “And, and what do these ranks do?”

“The Composer, the person who supposedly controls the whole game, will rank these Players and give them different rewards and punishments accordingly. Players who contribute the most to completing missions and Erasing Noises might win and leave this Game. But just as some Players can live…” Kunikida looks down onto the ground dejectedly, tension coiling up in his voice. “... Others can still be Erased if they are deemed underperforming and only slacking by to survive to day seven.”

A deathly silence fills the air, filled only occasionally with the sound of children's laughter.

(Atsushi thinks sometimes of how unfair it is, that children can laugh so freely while he has to fetter every note of exultation and fear back into his lungs)

Atsushi finds his voice laughably fractured. “So, in order not to be viewed as underperforming, there’s no way the Players will all cooperate, right? Because they have to contribute to completing the missions, to make sure they are ranked worthy of winning?”

Kunikida nods a slow, melancholic nod.

Kyouka’s fists clench painfully tight to both of her sides, and Atsushi suspects he might have seen traces of tears on her cheeks before she wrenches her face back up to look at the rest of them. “Kunikida-san, how do you know about all these?”

Kunikida gazes outside of the souvenir store. “Well… to be quite honest with you all, I’m a second-time entrant.”

Atsushi tries his best not to yelp and fails. “Ku—Kunikida-san is a second-time Player?”

“Is that weird? Dazai told me it’s common that Players who have performed exceptionally well might still not get to leave the Game, because the quota for leaving Players is already filled.”

Atsushi clutches his forehead, then his hand slides down to his cheeks, giving it a painful squeeze that can’t change anything he’s facing. 

“So, Kunikida-san, what you are saying is that even if we did the best we could and survive, there’s a chance we couldn’t leave and have to repeat it again because of some pre-selected quota?”

Slowly, Kunikida nods. “Unfortunately, yeah.”

“But how can I know for sure that Dazai is speaking the truth, Kunikida-san? For all we know he’s just lying to you.” said Kyouka in an upbraiding tone. 

“He isn’t, but I can’t explain to you why he knows for sure the circumstances surrounding my first Game. I apologize about th—”

“We will be taking our leave.”

Atsushi feels a painful grip around his wrist and watches in a gaping-mouth stupor as Kyouka drags him out of the store, not once looking back again.

“Kyouka-chan, why are we—”

“It’s pointless to keep talking. We are running out of time at this rate.”

“Hey, wait up a little there will you!”

Atsushi looks back and sees Yosano, who’s waving her Player Pin at them.

Kyouka turns back reluctantly. “What more crushing news do we have to hear?”

“Look, I’m not a second-time entrant, so I know nothing of Kunikida’s hardships enough to speak. But I’d say you guys cut him some slack.” Yosano glances back into the store, her tone grave and solemn. “The way I see it, he’s been through too much. He’s trying to look out for you, telling you all that.”

Kyouka continues her glare match with the heat-bleached ground for a moment, before swivelling her attention to Yosano. “Yosano-san, did you know about any of that? The ranks the Composer gave, and the pre-selected quota for people who can leave the Game?”

“I don’t know any of those—”

“Then that’s enough—”

“Enough of what, Izumi? Enough for you to cry into a pillow and give up?” Yosano’s tone turns accusatory for a moment, though her eyes soften quickly right the next second. “I know everything about this Game is unfair so far. You have no way of knowing what happened to you, you are probably thousands of miles away from people who love and care about you—”

_people who love and care about you—_

“But we are all doing our best here, okay? The world isn’t being fair at all right now, so the most we can do is to fight, keep fighting the most we can. It’s what Kunikida is doing, it’s what I’m doing, and it’s what you two are going to do too, got it?”

For a moment, it didn’t look like Kyouka is going to budge from her position, glare still fixed on Yosano’s face and hands still clutched on her sword and sheath. 

Then, it all releases with a quiet breath. “I get it. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Oh, and before I’ve forgotten somehow,” Yosano displays her Player Pin to them again. (Atsushi notes that the Pin is of a pinkish purple background adorned with a knife) “Kunikida and I just remember that you two probably don’t know how to use your Pin for scanning yet, right?”

“Scanning?”

“You can scan for the presence of Noises, which allows you to engage in combat with them or just avoid them if you must. You can do that by clicking onto your Player Pin. It works best when you are doing it together with your Partner, but it should work fine even when you are further away from them.”

Atsushi’s mind flashes back to the azure. “Wait, when I scan using my Pin, will it also show the RG people’s thoughts?”

“Yeah, that happens. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing…” said Atsushi, insincerely, because in his head all of those columns of thoughts flood back into him, digging deep depths inside that he has never known possible to exist. 

“Anyway, Kunikida and I hope this could help you two perform better in the Reaper’s Game.” 

“It definitely will. Thank you, Yosano-san. We will be on our way.”

In an almost identical manner, Kyouka once again drags on Atsushi’s sleeve, pulling him rapidly away from the zoo and out on the streets again. 

☾

“... Kyouka-chan, are you still mad?”

“Atsushi, are you telling me you aren’t?” Kyouka keeps up a pace of several steps ahead of Atsushi, just fast enough he can’t catch onto her expression. “What we are talking about here is the fact that nobody ever tells us the whole truth of what is happening in the Game. Would we have known if Kunikida-san didn’t tell us anything?”

“That’s true, but—”

“And the more I heard from Kunikida-san back there, the more suspicious of Dazai I am. Just what kind of position does he hold that he knows about the Composer’s stuff? And who exactly is this Composer person that pretty much judges us, like they have any right to do that?”

Kyouka clutches the sides of her head, crouching down in an almost-fetal position and quietly trembling. Quiet sniffles can be heard in different intervals between her shivers.

Atsushi crouches down next to Kyouka.

“Kyouka-chan… I know so far I seem quite unreliable, what with my Psych not working properly, and just not being smart enough to—”

“It has nothing to do with you, don’t you get it—”

“But I swear on my life here, Kyouka-chan, that I will absolutely do anything I can to free you from this Game.”

Kyouka’s hands fall away from her bangs, messy and scratched, and she shakes her head slowly, deliberately. 

“Kyouka-chan, I have no way of knowing what you have gone through before coming here, but if I know anything—”

“If you know anything you will not—”

“But let’s just focus on the now, shall we? The past is evidence we exist, but the future is the true testament of who we are at heart.”

“Your words may sound pretty, Atsushi, but…”

Kyouka fidgets and pulls on her own bangs, until she grits her teeth in some kind of grim determination. She looks at Atsushi in the eye again, and it surprises Atsushi just how little her eyes seem to have changed.

“I… I will try not to have outbursts like these as well. But Atsushi, please understand…” Kyouka’s lips spread wide, as if at last she has secrets that willfully allow themselves to be known, to come out into the open—

Then they seal tight and Kyouka’s neutral, serious expression returns. “We don’t have time to fool around like that. How about we try to scan for Noises around? Having more money can’t hurt.”

“But the amulet—”

“Atsushi, we can’t figure out anything right now anyway, can we? Plus, like Kunikida-san said, number of Noises Erased is one of the criteria the Composer ranks us on. Erasing some more Noises won’t give us any more trouble than we already have.”

Atsushi allows himself one more second of trembles.

“Are you sure? I don’t think I’m any good at controlling the tiger yet.”

“And I’m no good at controlling… Yasha Shirayuki either. We are even. Maybe practising more can help.”

Atsushi nods, though from the periphery of his line of sight he couldn’t quite miss the way Kyouka’s semi-reassuring smile turns tight-lipped. 

“Right. Let’s go then.”

☾

The first thought Kyouka has allowed herself to ruminate over—in between slashing throats of Noises around her—is regarding how quickly everything has gone to shit.

Yasha Shirayuki, as she has predicted, doesn’t attack out of her will; the phantom merely raises her sword and slashes the enemies as how she fancies it herself, rather than following any mental and verbal directions Kyouka gives out. Though Yasha Shirayuki has no trouble slashing down any of the Noises heading to bite off Kyouka’s limbs, her sword is only an unhinged carnival of carnage.

And Atsushi isn’t any better.

As Kyouka watches on, Noises all largely disperse as the tiger’s claws make contact with them, and there is little to no resistance on the Noises’ side as the tiger’s opponents. The bird-like Noises jab at them and the tiger claws their wings off; the canine-like Noises bite at the tiger’s hide and it retaliates tenfold, biting off the assailant Noises’ torsos. 

The tiger’s maw knows no other place to belong beyond the kisses of death it could spread to the Noises.

( _And maybe she, too,_ optimistically speaking, because truly, there is no better fitting end—)

Kyouka gathers up the video game-like bounties and she grimaces. Both the phantom swordswoman and the tiger are a shrinking prison cell she is locked in. Her own sword tip trembles and quakes like a palpitating heartbeat, fluttering against an invisible ribcage begging to be set free. Except Kyouka has no way of doing so, no way of waving her sword in a way that can appease both opponents. 

If she could only—

The tiger roars all of a sudden, turning away from Yasha Shirayuki as its attention is grabbed by something else. Kyouka spins to look over.

An oil barrel is rolling towards them. 

Kyouka frowns. Could it be that the barrel contains even more Noises? Some sort of smokescreen tricks to distract them, to make killing them easier for the Reapers? Nevertheless, she should stop it from rolling onto the tiger’s track, to stop it before something bad could happen.

“Yasha Shirayuki!” Kyouka calls out, voice a little shaky but mostly firm with determination, gesturing with her sword for the phantom to follow her as she begins her own rush towards the point.

The tiger gets to it first, slashing the barrel wide open at the middle section—

“No!” Kyouka cries, then comes the mental berate from the darker parts of her, the parts that chastise and shun all signs of weakness and _whycan’tyoustopactinglikeaweaklingforjustonemoment_ —

—and out of the circular metal layer bounces out a vagabond with a long brown coat and a familiar slender build.

The tiger raises its paw again and slams it against the vagabond’s back—

—and the tiger’s form dissipates, with Atsushi falling back down to the ground.

“Ah!”

“Atsushi, are you okay?” Kyouka rushes to where Atsushi has landed face-first, grabbing his arm to leverage him off the ground. “You feeling hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine, it’s just my head that’s hurting,” Atsushi grimaces, giving his own forehead a few pats before sitting upright on the ground. He turns towards where the barrel has landed. 

“Dazai-san?”

Kyouka’s sword flashes out faster than her mind can spin.

“Ah, Atsushi-kun saves me from such a huge demise again! How will I ever pay back to you?” Said vagabond stretches himself a little, the sounds of vertebrae popping obnoxiously loud, before he turns back to the duo and crouches down to look at Atsushi on his eye level. “Ah, perhaps you will permit your dear Partner to have the thrill of running her sword through me?”

Atsushi turns back to Kyouka, and gently but firmly pushes down her sword to point somewhere else on the ground. “She, she doesn’t mean any harm. And we are just passing through to look for the amulet.”

“That so-called ‘Golden Feather Amulet’, huh?” Dazai scratches the back of his neck, an annoyingly nonplussed expression on his face. “Really, it’s not that hard to find! The Reapers, in general, are awful at naming things; they see a beaver-looking cup, they’ll just name it a ‘beaver cup’!”

Atsushi frowns. “Do, do you mean that, the Golden Feather Amulet just… looks like a golden feather?”

“There’s no way of knowing whether it’s true,” Kyouka said, still a sense of untrustworthy distance in her eyes. “For all I know, he’s just making things up on the fly.”

“It’s up to you to decide! Oh, by the way,” Dazai gestures towards the torn barrel, a mock-exasperated tone on his lips. “Just so you know, I’m not trying to commit suicide or anything.”

“Why would we assume you were trying to commit suicide?” asks Atsushi.

“Because I’m stuck! Inside a barrel! Voluntarily!” Dazai casts a sideways glance at Atsushi while saying so, a sideways glance that seemingly demands Atsushi as to why he couldn’t tell whether Dazai’s descent in the barrel is voluntary in nature or not. “Anyway! That doesn’t mean I’m committing suicide though, even though what I did sounds very similar to one of the items placed in the Complete Handbook of Suicide, it’s still nowhere close to what I was actually doing!”

“So… what were you doing?” asks Kyouka hesitantly.

“Why, it’s obvious too! I’m just testing out a new method of transport! You all see how quickly the barrel travels; with some time, I’m sure it will explode in popularity as the new most trendy way to travel in UG Yokohama!”

Kyouka drags on Atsushi’s hand roughly. “Let’s just go, Atsushi. He’s not helping us at all.”

Atsushi turns reluctantly to comply, while Dazai’s raves continue in overly-heated enthusiasm. 

“Something tells me that this trend will be especially popular for kids! Kids rarely know where their hearts are set to go, so going around in a barrel blindly might just be the ideal type of transport for them! The adventures! The intrigue! It will even be comparable to paddling around helplessly without their parents on a colourful swan boat in the Kodomonokuni Theme Park’s lake!”

“Why the hell did we ever trust that man to help us?...” Kyouka mutters to herself as she quickens her pace. 

“Kyouka-chan, I know you say you don’t trust Dazai-san, but what he just said sounds like a clue.” Atsushi ponders. “A colourful swan boat… maybe that’s where the amulet is located!”

“That makes no sense, Atsushi. It’s not like the Kodomonokuni Theme Park can have… have…” Kyouka’s voice trails off as realization hits her. The possibility of the amulet being stuck to a swan boat because it counts for being a bird. How rationally speaking people wouldn’t think of a swan boat in the first place upon mentioning ‘feather’. 

Kyouka crosses her arms and lets out a long exhale. “As much as I hate to admit it, it does seem very likely. Besides, it’s not like we have any other options for now.”

“Then it’s set! Let’s go to Kodomonokuni Theme Park then!” Atsushi takes up a bouncy walk, as if a spring is added to his feet.

“Atsushi, about what I said earlier—”

“Everything is bygones now, Kyouka-chan, don’t you worry—”

“I will do my best to trust in you, so I hope you will trust my judgement too.”

Atsushi glances back at Kyouka, who’s turned her head a bit sideways so Atsushi can’t judge what her expression is full, though the somewhat faint blush on her cheeks has sold something away. 

“I mean what I say. Let’s win this game with everything we got.”

“Kyouka-chan…”

“... Let’s just get there before we go with anything else!”

☾

Kodomonokuni Theme Park is two Wards away, which initially presents quite a challenge for the duo to get there. Luckily, despite the potential threat of the Support Reapers coming up with even more annoying mini-missions, they manage to set foot on Aoba-Ward in a decently short amount of time. Atsushi checks out his timer as they step foot into a small area of the park with lavatories and a greenhouse. There is still time.

“Okay! Let’s look up the map to where the boats are…” Atsushi points at a small rectangular shape with webbed lines on the map, then pointing to a building in front of them. “According to this map, we are at the gardens, at district D. The fastest route to the lake is to get through the camellia forest of district C to get onto a lane that leads to a cherry blossoms forest, and the lake is right next to it.”

“Let’s get there and finish this mission once and for all then.” Kyouka scrunches her face up, in a manner that implies a strong attempt to keep from sneezing. Despite that, she keeps a quick traipse, effortlessly walking through the camellia and approaching the cherry blossoms.

Atsushi rushes a little quicker. “Kyouka-chan? Do you have some kind of flower allergy?”

“No… I’m just…” Kyouka casts an unreadable look over the cherry blossoms above her. As if to pointedly ignore the sky of pinkish hues, Kyouka glances right, towards the water slides and the swimming pool next to the gardens where they just started. Towards the smiling children gliding through the water, laughing around each other. 

A stone drops down Atsushi’s gut, dragging his heart with it to the depths as a sense of realization overwhelms him.

Kyouka’s countenance isn’t twisted out of some laughable flower allergy. It is out of longing, the kind that latchkey kids responsible for fixing their own dinner and doing their own homework with zero guidance radiate towards the slightest hint of childish entertainment that they implicitly grew out of, way before they ever have the chance to engage with it.

Maybe that’s what Kyouka is like before the Game. Going to school, going home and getting their own dinner, doing homework, sleeping, loop it all over again. Going to the park, swing and slide around or driving bumper cars? Winning gifts from booth games?

Nil. Zero. She has never had any of those.

“Atsushi, I can tell what you are thinking with the look on your face.”

Atsushi startles, his consciousness getting wrenched back at Kyouka’s voice, rightfully matching the somewhat disdained look she has in her eyes.

“Kyouka-chan, whatever you are thinking, I’m not—”

“Yes you are, you are thinking about how I am a sad kid who has never got to play around in parks like that. It’s okay, Atsushi.”

“It’s not though, if you think deeper into it. It’s not fair that latchkey kids like you and orphans like me never get to—”

A crackle of electricity burns the back of Atsushi’s eyes. He throws his head back, gasping aloud.

“Orphans? Atsushi? Atsushi, are you okay—”

“No! I’m okay. I swear I’m okay.” Atsushi clamps his hands around his head, then letting them off in purchase for physical balance. Heaving slightly heavier, before his breathing evens out again.

_What was that just now?_

“Yeah, I’m fine now.” Atsushi gives his own chest a few more pats.

Kyouka frowns, and for a moment, a feeling of guilt surges inside Atsushi, a scalding sensation gathering in the middle of his chest. _Atsushi, you were the one who promised taking care of Kyouka—_

“Look, Atsushi. Let’s make a promise right here.”

“Huh?”

“On one of these six days, let’s play anything we like in this park after we finished the mission.”

A beat of silence in Atsushi’s mind, before something warm and radiant like happiness blossoms across its expanse. “Thank you, Kyouka-chan.”

Kyouka beams, a genuine simper full of mirth Atsushi couldn’t remember seeing at all. “I told you, you can trust in me too.”

Atsushi and Kyouka eventually arrive at the lake several minutes later, craning their necks out near the bridge’s railings in search of the swan boat. 

“Atsushi, can you see any swan boat at all?”

“So far, no, every boat seems to be a regular paddling b— Wait!”

Atsushi points towards the distant end of the lake and Kyouka sees it, at long last, a swan boat that is completely plated in gold, slowly paddling towards them.

And on the swan boat’s front, close to where a painted bow is, an even stronger golden light, shaped like a feather.

“Let’s go!”

Atsushi runs down the bridge without another word, despite the warnings Kyouka gives against running so fast in a somewhat crowded park. Nevertheless, Atsushi makes quick way through the people wandering on the trails close to the lake, and as Kyouka watches on, Atsushi has already made it to where the swan boat has neared the ground, perhaps for the passenger inside to leave.

Kyouka follows as closely behind as she can, and once again she finds to her joy that her lips couldn’t quite keep from curving into another smile. She gets off the bridge and walks up, as Atsushi exultingly greets the departing passenger—

—and then the world goes up in a white-out.

☾

Atsushi comes to again, losing grip on his pulse and where his limbs are.

The blinding pain of his arms and legs mute down agonizingly slow, so Atsushi leverages himself off the ground on bruised palms. Slowly, he lifts himself off the ground, both legs exploding in pain. 

“Hmm… the statistics for this experiment today is quite astounding too! I’d call it a success!”

Standing atop the swan boat is a man wearing a pair of goggles with purple lenses, a peculiarly long green scarf and a white lab coat, along with a pair of traditional slippers.

“W—Who are you?” Atsushi shouts. He glances behind him and right there is Kyouka, lying down face-first with her body writhing. 

“Name’s Kajii Motojirou, the greatest scientist of this era!” The man wrings out a pair of medium-sized Reaper wings and Atsushi’s heart chills. “And it is my duty to prevent you from finishing the mission, preferably with me Erasing you both as well!”

“Atsushi, stay back.”

A sword spates past Atsushi only by several inches apart. Kyouka is up and running again, putting herself in front of him and facing down the Reaper. 

“Kyouka-chan, let me fight him instead.”

“Nonsense, Atsushi, you are hurt right now. I only took a bit of his damage, so let me go and—”

“Kyouka-chan, didn’t we just promise each other we will trust in each other’s judgements?”

“That’s right Atsushi, and anyone can tell right now you are hurt way too badly—”

“And even if you manage to defeat this Reaper, I won’t be able to get the amulet in this physical state. Not to mention…” Atsushi nudges towards the lake, and Kyouka turns her head to watch.

The swan boat, just within arm’s reach previously, is slowly but certainly floating away towards the middle of the lake again.

Kyouka turns back to Atsushi with a begrudgingly determined look. “Don’t argue with me just this time, Atsushi. You have to be the one to get it.”

“But if I could just turn into the tiger, these wounds are very little—”

“And you will still feel every ounce of pain those Noises will dish out on you before you can heal. You can run faster than me, so you should go—”

“What if you get hurt? I can’t believe if Shirayuki can absolutely protect you with whatever that Reaper is capable of.”

Their arguments stall to a stash of crackling embers, neither of the two willing to admit their strategy might be the wrong one. With the swan boat floating further and further away, Kajii’s Noises also grow in number, ready to release whatever devastation they have just left on Atsushi not ten minutes ago.

It is only the second day and they are doomed to—

“Kyouka-chan, how about we team up and attack together?”

Kyouka spares another nervous glance towards the front. “Together?”

“Since he is technically the last guardian of that amulet, he’s probably thinking that the two of us will divide up, one fighting him and keeping him busy while the other tries to get the amulet. But that’s where he’s wrong. We can attack together and take him out, then we can focus on the amulet.”

“But what if there’s another—”

“We will just fight them too! Together!”

Kyouka tenses, her breathing evening out as Atsushi does stand back up and gives the Reaper the worst stink-eye he can manage. She chuckles about it internally before standing up alongside him. 

Kajii shrugs. “Oh? You two would like to fight with me seriously again, is it? Well, which one of you would like to fight first?”

“It’s simple.” Kyouka leans down enough to spring at first notice, hand clutching her Pin tight.

“Rather than what you’ve been hoping for,” Atsushi follows suit, his posture relaxed in sharp contrast with Kyouka’s. “We will just fight altogether.”

Kajii makes a face that barely registers what they said, before they both make their way towards the Noises together, towards the same spot, Shirayuki’s gelid long blade cutting through the writhing messes of Noises.

From the dispersing Noises, several objects shaped like a lemon appear, a small-scale shower of it raining down on their battlefield. Yasha Shirayuki’s sword pokes one up.

“Oh no! You murdered all my wonderful Noises in one fell scoop! What should I ever do?” Kajii yells, throwing his head back towards the air. Then, in a creepy slow-motion, his head lowers to address the duo again. “Why, all my Noises come prepared! I hope you guys love lemons half as much as I do at least!”

Yasha Shirayuki retracts her sword to above Kyouka, as if it is sparing an inquisitive examination of the objects itself as well.

Atsushi’s eyes widen. “Kyouka-chan, make her throw it away!”

As if it has already heeded Atsushi’s instruction, Yasha Shirayuki flings the lemon-like object away from it, and instantly the lemon explodes on its own accord. 

“That’s right! A damned bomb!” Kajii winks, and Kyouka wants to run her sword through him. “Don’t just rush into battles with zero strategy, kids!”

“Kyouka-chan, stay back! The rest of the bombs will explode too!” Atsushi calls from somewhere close to the bank, and Kyouka turns to confirm that he is exactly there. “I will go get that amulet, so please just focus on—”

“I will fight this guy.” 

Atsushi couldn’t have heard the proclamation, having jumped into the waters just as the scattered lemon bombs have exploded. He focuses on where the swan boat is by focusing on the golden light the amulet emits, and stroke by stroke he swims closer towards it—

—just as a lemon bomb surges towards him.

☾

Kyouka finishes slashing yet another lemon bomb to halves of fireworks and makes her way towards Kajii’s neck. The overwhelming scent of lemon and firework powder assault Kyouka’s every sense, the powder even staining her eyes and making it unfairly more difficult to defeat Kajii altogether.

Despite his strategy all but being thoroughly vanquished, Kajii keeps up his composure and merely summons more Noises, each another writhing mess of black creatures encasing another lemon bomb.

An explosion flashes off at the edges of Kyouka’s periphery, splashing up a huge column of white.

_Atsushi—_

Kyouka rushes left towards the lake, before another fray of lemon bombs fringe against her route and she is forced back again.

“I suggest you focus on yourself, lady. Do you know that you only have seven minutes to make another Partner contract with before you are Erased as well?” Kajii grins, a sardonic note running wild in his features. “So now! Are you ready to face your finale?”

Kyouka bites back another cry buried into her chest, and brings out her own sword out, rushing towards Kajii.

Another gigantic splash of water, and Kajii is enveloped in a weave of moonlight.

Despite the highest hopes Kyouka has for how this day will go, the tiger has appeared, again.

Swift and merciless as it always has been, the tiger swipes down against the Noises and Kajii in one fell scoop, cutting up sickish yellow gashes across the Reaper’s stomach.

Kajii collapses onto the floor, clutching his stomach wounds while the rest of his Noises all rush to overwhelm the tiger. Several of them launch themselves onto the tiger’s back, clawing streaming blood out of moonlit-cerulean pelt.

Kyouka’s throat constricts, a shiver passing through her body as she raises her sword again.

_If it’s true that there are only seven minutes for another contract, I might as well just settle down to achieve what I have always wanted instead, right?_

Her blade is hesitant and Yasha Shirayuki is silent.

Then, as if fate itself has a far better idea, Kyouka watches the tiger’s bleeding wounds close by themselves, slipping back up into invisible seams.

The tiger counters, biting every Noise close to it until each of their heads fall off. Each lemon bomb exposed was like children’s fireworks, barely leaving anything on the tiger’s torso at all in the ensuing explosions.

Kyouka turns, scuttling towards the boat as it continues to float further and further away. She reaches her hand out, the sensation of brushing against gold just butterfly light on her fingertips—

Yasha Shirayuki floats out and retrieves it.

The phantom floats down, for the rarest of time not standing behind Kyouka as her guardian and fighter. Her ghostly luminescent hands spread out palms-up, and there the amulet is, a small strip of golden feather. 

Kyouka grabs it with her right hand and spreads out her left hand. The timer freezes, and unceremoniously blinks out.

Her legs give out and she collapses onto the ground in relief, holding the amulet close to herself as thoughts form and dissipate quickly inside her head. Kyouka heaves one, two huge sighs of relief and lets her body relax, bask in the knowledge that this day’s tribulations are finally over. 

And now, there’s only the tiger to deal with.

Kyouka runs the solutions she already has in her head. The convenient one is, obviously, to avoid it— the Players have but a short period of consciousness after the mission is accomplished, so it won’t be difficult for Kyouka to just wait out today and wake up to the next day and carry on.

On the other hand… she would be abandoning the friend— maybe it is still debatable about how deep their friendship after not even a whole week could run, but Atsushi said so, didn’t he?— who has so ardently promised to trust in her, to accompany her to the amusement park she has dreamt days and nights going to. To be her friend.

Is she someone who can cast off people just because it’s convenient for her?

 _Always trust your Partner_.

“First, I have to go find—”

“Ouch!”

Kyouka steps back, having bounced into someone she couldn’t identify just now. She takes a look at the person she has slammed into as they let out a yelp and stands back up.

“Ah… that was quite a bad entrance for me…” 

Kyouka starts, sword already in the process of being unsheathed. And as if she was capable of detecting Kyouka’s anxiety, Yasha Shirayuki already has a sword out as well.

In front of her is a little child with peculiar eyes and hair. One half of their hair is light lavender while the other is chocolate brown, and one eye has a cream-yellow circle over the pupil while the other has a star. They wear a dark sand-coloured scarf and dark navy blue coat, a rose-red bag slung across their shoulder. 

All strange features aside, this child… looks human enough. No visible Reaper wings.

Kyouka lets her sword slide back down the sheath. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

“It’s simple, missy, I just need one small thing here.” the child stood back up. “I just need you to give me a reason not to Erase you on the spot.”

The sword swings back out. “Are you picking a fight with me? I’m not a Reaper, you kn—”

“Exactly! I’m looking for more Players. I’ve Erased like, five today I think! Six if you count for the fact that one of them couldn’t form a contract fast enough to make up for that, but I like acute technicality above boasting.”

A low growl behind her reminds Kyouka of the tiger, and it takes everything in her not to turn around to deal with it. 

“Oh? That tiger is your Partner, isn’t he? The one with the Psych of transformation.” The child Reaper’s face stretches out a lips-splitting grin. Then they zip open their red bag. “Do you want to see some tricks? Have some fun with me?” 

“I don’t—”

Kyouka’s voice dies in her throat, as a small Noise shaped like a humanoid doll crawls out of the Reaper’s bag.

“Oh, and how rude of me to forget my manners! Your dear playmate here is the bearer of the name ‘Yumeno Kyusaku’, though they prefer the simple letter ‘Q’ to substitute that.”

Loath is Kyouka to concede it, but the warm tones of Kunikida and Yosano’s reassuring words become something she longs for again, yet something she can under no capacity obtain at this state. All she has is her sword, a wavering faith in Yasha Shirayuki, and the hopes that the tiger will not join in the fray.

“Come now, missy, you don’t have to be all up in arms thinking about fighting me already! It’s true that Reapers can go about Erasing Players with Noises anytime they like, but I’m no savage like the rest of them!” Yumeno spreads out their arms and pirouettes. “I’m special because rather than being merciless slaughter machines, I give my Player opponents a chance to prove themselves before I decide on whether I want to Erase them.”

The tip of Kyouka’s sword shakes. “What do you mean by that?”

“A test of character! A theatre piece of pain.” Yumeno draws back their right sleeves.

Their right wrist is streaked with blood, a mess of spiked wires wrapped around it tightly. 

_That bump into them just now_.

“Do you know that all Reapers have Abilities too? Unlike you Players, we have the regulations to not use them directly in combat, since under normal conditions we can only summon Noises to fight you.” Yumeno drew the mess of wires up, and several more slits manifest, dragging bloody tracks. “That Kajii you just fought, for example, has the Ability known as ‘Lemon Bomb’, and he infuses it into his Noises so that when they are defeated they can still make a last stand with the bombs.

“Would little missy want to have a chance to guess what mine is?”

Kyouka’s voice falters, chipped into tiny pieces she couldn’t retrieve in the fray of yet another ensuing battle, of pure pain. “I couldn’t possibly know, but I would guess that it has to be triggered with you hurting yourself.”

“Half correct! Rather than me hurting myself, it has to be the person I want to curse, that person who has personally hurt me.”

“You did that by bumping into me—”

“You catch on quick missy! Ten bonus points to you!” Yumeno bounces up into the air, a small trapeze of pain and sadism. “Not that the points will matter… Anyway, simply put, my Ability ‘Dogra Magra’ puts people into the curse of going insane and destroying everything around them until they die. And to complete that curse, all that needs to be done is for the Noises I summoned to lose their heads.”

“Lose their h—”

“Oh, and in case you don’t feel threatened just yet, feel around your right cheek. The marking that signifies I have cursed you should be right there.”

Kyouka complies. Faint heat emanates from it, and her fingers trace the outline of a deformed hand on it.

“Then, I think you understand the stakes at hand for you. Now then, are you ready for your test of character to be carried out?”

Kyouka clenches her sword tight enough to bleach her knuckles white, then she relaxes her grip. “What do you want from me?”

Yumeno closes their eyes with a satisfied smirk. “It’s simple. Just do as I say and I will not only not Erase you, but allow you to leave the Game immediately.”

“Just get to the point!”

Yumeno’s eyes open wide again, twin pools of chasms glinting with deceitfully bright starlight. “Just do one thing! Erase your Partner, the tiger.”

☾

Yasha Shirayuki is edging to comply immediately, Kyouka can feel it, through the thrum of its ghostly form moving, floating more and more to the front.

But Kyouka doesn’t. She holds back, as weak as she could, willing Shirayuki to stop approaching the tiger.

“Huh? Why are you hesitating?” Yumeno paces along the edges of the lake, scattering bits of bread towards the lake and making faces at the waterfowl passing by. “It’s an easy way out for you! Surely you are not afraid of fighting the tiger, right? So what’s the big hold-up?”

“What I’m afraid or not afraid of isn’t dictated by you, and you definitely have no right over what I do either!” Kyouka all but barks out the riposte, willing Yasha Shirayuki to point its sword towards the Reaper instead, towards her true enemy.

The ghostly brilliant sword stays pointing at the tiger, which has noticed Shirayuki’s existence as well and starts growling. 

The tiger takes one step. Two steps. Cautiously, but ever closer.

“Come now, missy. It is such a terribly simple thing to do. All you need to do is slash its throat and the job is done, ain’t it? Why embroil yourself in some fake moral dilemma that isn’t yours to solve?”

“I will never hurt a friend, no matter what you think of my morality.”

“Is that so? Aren’t you most used to throwing people under the bus for your own survival from around here?” Yumeno said, their tone deliberately marinated in algolagnic joy. “That’s the summation of what you have done before the Game, and certainly will be what you continue doing here, don’t you think? As befitting who you are deep down.”

“You have no right to judge what I will and can do.” 

“Why can’t I? For someone who obviously doesn’t know what they want to do either, I think I can have a hand in writing their future.”

The tiger roars once, and before Kyouka can assemble a strong-enough mental defence against Yumeno, the tiger’s vicious prance towards her shatters every bit that she has built already. 

“Huh, for as much as you like the idea of not fighting the tiger, the tiger itself seems eager to engage in combat with you. I wonder if that attests to both of your true natures,” Yumeno covers their lips, as if they couldn’t help but curve into a smile. “That you always fight back, fight back relentlessly so everyone around you will vanish, vanish and you don’t have to fight any more.”

“That’s not real! I’m not like that!” Kyouka strikes her sword towards Yumeno, who merely dodges it with a swift leap into the air. Kyouka chances another stab into Yumeno’s heart, until the humanoid Noise shows up, cackling maniacally as Kyouka’s sword edge just grazes against the fringes of its neck.

Any further, or should Kyouka have used more force, the neck would rupture and calamity be showered upon them all.

“Surely, you can chance to kill me and my Noises, I am all for it! I’d be curious to see if you can cut my neck before you go insane.” 

The sword clangs once as it hits the floor.

Kyouka lets her legs give out, her heart hit the wall.

In sharp contrast with her actions, Yasha Shirayuki turns around and looks for the tiger.

Locates its snowy pelt.

And it starts approaching it, sword glinting under the gloomy sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I try to revise, edit and cut out parts any more I think I might go insane, so this is the best I could go now lol.
> 
> Do not be daunted by this word count tho I promise it will get shorter and leaner in future updates www.
> 
> "Why are you typing in proper grammar all of a sudden" IDK either. bc I'm editing?
> 
> Anyway, comments and kudos are appreciated as always!!!!


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